North Korea nuclear reactors suspended

NEW YORK — The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union announced a decision yesterday to suspend construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea, which claims to be developing atomic weapons.

The four are members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) executive board, which had been building the light-water reactors under a 1994 deal with North Korea. The reactors were meant to come online in 2007.

The suspension will be for one year, the board said in a statement from its New York headquarters, announcing a decision reached earlier this month.

However, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday that the U.S. position was that “there’s no future for the reactor project.”

The light-water reactors, difficult to adapt to the production of nuclear weapons, were meant to replace three North Korean reactors that are able to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea has also said it is enriching uranium, which, like plutonium, can be used to make atom bombs. Most security analysts believe the communist nation has reprocessed enough plutonium from spent fuel rods to make at least two bombs and fear it may be stepping up weapons production.

The future of the $4.6 billion reactor project came into question when it became apparent a year ago that North Korea was violating a 1994 agreement to cease any nuclear-weapons programs.

Meanwhile, North Korea yesterday berated Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for calling its regime “evil,” and accused Washington of deception.

The statement came as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly wrapped up an Asian tour and left for Washington to further coordinate policy amid hopes for a second round of six-nation talks on the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

“Recently, the Bush administration is talking about offering a security guarantee for our country, but the slander by Rumsfeld, who leads the U.S. policy, shows that the ‘security guarantee’ is nothing more than a play aimed at deceiving us,” KCNA, the North’s official news agency, said in a commentary. The commentary was monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

This shows that it is only right “for us to increase the nuclear-deterrent force,” KCNA said.

North Korea has accused Washington of planning a pre-emptive attack against it, after labeling the communist country part of an “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq.

Yesterday, Mr. Kelly met his South Korean counterpart, Assistant Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, for a second day in the South Korean capital, Seoul. They discussed security assurances for North Korea, one of Pyongyang’s key conditions for abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Kelly made a quick tour of Asia this week amid efforts to hold another round of the nuclear talks involving the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia. He visited Tokyo and Beijing before coming to Seoul.

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